Triangle Sidings – secrets of the Tube

Behind the Tube stations and the platforms that we see, there’s a whole hidden Tube out there – sidings, depots, closed stations. One of the delights of writing this blog has been that I get to research all these fascinating places you dimly glimpse from the window of a train. Triangle Sidings is one of those strange places.

If you look out of the window between Earls Court and High Street Kensington, you’ll be able to see how the track suddenly splays out and the tunnel seems to widen. Look closer and you’ll see the complex points that give access to multiple tracks laid out in the darkness. You  might even see a stationary train, its lights out, mysterious as the flickering light from your train illuminates it just for a moment.

This is Triangle Sidings. The sidings were originally completely open, but in the 1950s they were built over – there’s now a big Sainsbury’s on top, supported by the monstrous iron girders overhead.

They are used as a ‘stable’ for trains that run on the Wimbledon to Edgware Road part of the District Line. Sometimes, Circle Line trains use the sidings to reverse back towards Edgware Road – but they are too long to fit a complete train into the sidings.

Why ‘Triangle Sidings’? Well, look at the Tube map and you can probably guess. The site is a rough triangle between Earls Court, High Street Kensington and Gloucester Road, right at the south-west angle of the Circle Line and District Line.

I know Triangle Sidings will never be one of London’s top tourist sights. But it’s another mystery solved for anyone who, like me, has looked out of the train window at the Bermuda Triangle of London Underground, and wondered just what is going on.

Photo by Annie Mole on flickr